The Courage to Survive

Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive. ― Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire

It’s an odd feeling, this state of calm and peace, of settling into a life of relative normalcy. For the first time in months I am not constantly worrying about fevers or chemo side effects, I am not reviewing a treatment roadmap and trying to prepare for the next phase, and I am not living in a persistent state of fear over what tomorrow holds.

Hazel dashes by me at full speed, running barefoot through the hall of her grandparents’ home chasing a cousin into the next room. I hear a loud crash and jump up with a start, but then hear an eruption of intense, infectious laughter that I know to be Hazel’s. All is good, she is safe. She waddles into the hallway, still laughing, cheeks a rosy red hue, her blue eyes barely visible as she grins hard, crinkling her face into a soft pastry that swallows her cheekbones, her gumdrop nose wiggling with every giggle. The most striking difference in Hazel’s current appearance is her hair. After having spent months with nothing more than a few strands of wiry red hair left on her otherwise completely naked scalp, she now has a gorgeous covering of down-like fuzz growing thick and glorious atop her head. It is the most beautiful and amazing thing I have ever seen. Her hair is golden-auburn, approaching half an inch in length, and is as soft as the down from an angel’s wing. Hazel’s eyelashes have also returned, showing up tricolor at first with a deep red base, black middle section, and tipped in whitish-blond, now giving way to luscious red lashes that shoot out nearly an inch from her face. Her red eyebrows have also grown back in, thin and wispy, as if painted on by the tiny paintbrushes of fairies as she slept.

Even as I listen to the sounds of cousins playing, enjoying the smells of dinner wafting in from the kitchen and basking in the light of the reality of our new day, I am reserved. If I close my eyes I can still put myself in the hospital. I can smell the antiseptic used to clean dressings, my nostrils burn from the bleach used to clean the floors, my ears perk at the beep of monitors, and I see the bright, white lights beaming from overhead. These visions are vivid, born from experience, and seared into my memory by repetition. Over the past 10 months we have endured more than I could have ever imagined, spending weeks in the hospital, bringing poisons disguised as medicine into our home, and watching as our baby has undergone countless rounds of anesthesia, chemo, and operations. I have witnessed Hazel be intubated, have a medical device placed in her chest, and seen the long, steel needles used to puncture her spine and her hip. My memories haunt me, and yet my heart hurts worse because I know for all of the intense details of my thoughts, Hazel’s are a hundred times more awful.

I stand in the hallway basking in the beauty of this tiny person staring up at me, thinking back on 2017. Having never been in the armed forces, I can only speculate that the feelings I have looking back on our year fighting cancer approach those of a soldier having returned from a wartime deployment. I know the experiences are not the same, but soldiers as well as my family have witnessed life-changing, horrific events that will shape the rest of their lives. We have “gone through something”, traversing a valley that no one wants to travel, and now, as we begin to emerge on the other side, our glimpses of this new life do little more than remind us of what once was and can never be again.

I cannot “undo” cancer, I cannot take it away from my family and neither can anyone else. We have seen this thing, this disease, firsthand. We have lived with it and fought tooth-and-nail to remove it from our life, but the lessons we learned along the way will remain. We have spent 10 months on high-alert, constantly afraid of what comes next or what COULD come next, and now as we approach the relative tranquility of Maintenance Phase I don’t really know how to feel. I mean obviously I feel happiness and relief wash over me in waves, yet there is a residue of uneasiness that taints every good experience that I now have. Given the wide breadth of iterations that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can take, some experts may say I am experiencing the effects of mild PTSD. I honestly couldn’t tell you what I’m experiencing. I can only sum it up by saying, our family has seen some unpleasant things in the past 10 months and those experiences will manifest themselves in our everyday life for a very long time.

I have walked a path that was specifically designed for me, for Hazel, and for my family. Some days I led our family on that path and other times I was led by them. Many times we stumbled along together, shoulder to shoulder, trying to protect the one that was dear to our hearts but in the most danger. Our journey is not over by any means. We still have 18 months of hospital visits, at-home chemo, blood tests, waiting, and watching. The hope is that Hazel will charge along this path, relearning how to be a little girl again, forgetting much of what has become routine in her life up to now.

Everyone says Maintenance Phase is when your life becomes more normal again, but what does that even mean? What is normal? I don’t know how to act; almost don’t know how to feel about our life now. My family was attacked and is still dealing with the aftermath of that attack. We cannot just act like nothing has happened when SO MUCH has happened. There is no reason to commemorate the sadness of the past year by constantly reliving those experiences, but when I close my eyes, I see it all; I relive it all over again.

Someday I am sure the memories will fade, or at least I pray they fade. I wish for them to dissipate like smoke, dissolving painlessly into the blackest depths of my mind, never to be rekindled again. Until that day comes, I can handle my memories of this time spent with cancer. I can understand what we have been through and how it has changed our life. I can use the lessons it has taught me to be strong and to use the love I have witnessed to provide a safe harbor for my family against the evils of this world. I may not be the same person as I once was, but for better or for worse, I am still a father to my children and a husband to my wife. Hazel is still here and we have weathered a storm the strength of which I have never seen before. As my family continues to progress in this journey, I don’t know what else to do but stay the course. I am settled in and ready. Somehow we have managed, somehow we have survived.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” – 2 Timothy 4:7